Having used my old hardware for quite some time now (AMD Athlon XP 2500+ @ 2100, DFI AD77 Infinity) I decided to get new hardware. Basically the decision was not driven by the need for speed but rather by the nifty virtualization features current CPUs provide.

Checking the market revealed that for no obvious reason Intel decided against the users and all CPUs not costing the rough equivalent of a small car are out of scope. So I was with AMD, again. That’s a good thing because AMD thought that it is a good choice to have only 1 basic CPU layout and sell the partially broken chips with deactivated broken parts for less money under different names.

This means that next to every CPU they sell right now whether it is named Athlon X2, Athlon X3 or Phenom or even Sempron is in fact a complete Phenom II with deactivated parts. The parameters for deactivation are AMDs secrets…

So I bought a 4core CPU with a deactivated 3rd level Cache: AthlonII X4 620

I wanted to keep my old hard drives and the rest of the machine, at least for now.

So I thought I’d rip out the old stuff, tighten the screws of the new stuff boot up and be ready!

No… that was not the thing that was about to happen… After having everything put in the right place the machine tried to boot but was unable to find the right logical volume (lvm) because the new boards PATA/IDE device was now called /dev/hdc instead of /dev/hda!